Selective mapping of coded multi-channel transmission

ABSTRACT

The present invention provides a methods, apparatus and systems for improving a systems-level data rate on a communications link such the orthogonal frequency division multiplexed multiple access (OFDMA) downlink used in used in WiFi and LTE cellular/wireless mobile data applications. The present invention preferably uses a form of multilevel coding and decoding known as tiled-building-block encoding/decoding. With the present invention, different receivers coupled to different parallel downlink channels with different channel qualities decode different received signal constellations at different levels of resolution. This allows the downlink of the OFDMA system to operate with a significantly higher data rate, thus eliminating existing inefficiencies in the downlink and significantly increasing system level bandwidth efficiency.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates generally to coded modulation techniques for usein digital communication systems such as orthogonal frequency divisionmultiplexed multiple access (OFDMA) systems. More particularly, theinvention relates to methods and apparatus for multilevel coding anddecoding. Different receivers coupled to different parallel downlinkchannels with different channel qualities decode different receivedsignal constellations at different levels of resolution. This allows theoverall OFDMA downlink to operate with a significantly higher data rate,thus significantly increasing system level bandwidth efficiency.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The OFDMA downlink of LTE (long term evolution) mobile wireless datasystems operated by carriers in the licensed bands has always beenhindered by key system level bottlenecks and congestion. Also, WiFi hasbeen solely deployed in unlicensed bands where huge spectrum isavailable in 2.4 Ghz (UHF) and 5 GHz band. Up until now, WiFi has beenthe only major player in these bands. But as the licensed bands arehitting congestion, operators are looking to deploy LTE in unlicensedspectrum as well. There are two main types of LTE in unlicensed band, 1)LTE-U (Qualcomm) and LAA (3GPP). With these new technologies, incumbentWiFi has no choice but to share spectrum resources in TDD (time divisionduplex) with LTE-U and LAA. Hence, spectrally efficient utilization ofthe unlicensed bands is becoming more critical for WiFi downlinks.Similarly, LTE on the unlicensed bands has to cooperate with incumbentWiFi so that new technologies offering enhanced downlink efficiency forany or all of LTE, LTE-U, LAA, and WiFi systems are needed. Other higherbandwidth OFDMA technologies such as “GigaFi” are being introduced toprovide higher data rates than can currently be achieved with WiFi. Newtechnologies offering enhanced downlink efficiency for GigaFi or othertypes of next-generation enhanced short range or long range systems arealso needed.

LTE and WiFi systems typically involve a multi-user downlink thatemploys orthogonal frequency division multiplexed multiple access(OFDMA). For example, in LTE systems, different mobile units will beassigned respective resource blocks that each identify a set of 12 OFDMtones (tone=line frequency). Each resource block includes 12 15 KHz widesub-carriers (on the frequency axis) and 14 (or 12) OFDM symbols on thetime axis. Hence each resource block will carry 168 (or 144) data orcontrol symbols at a specified bit loading that can consist of QPSK(4-QAM), 16-QAM, 64-QAM, or 256-QAM. In LTE, each resource block will betransmitted in 1 ms and occupies 180 KHz bandwidth. Other technologiessuch as cable modems use a different downlink channel other than OFDMA,but have similar issues with different attached cable modems havingdifferent quality downlink channels.

Consider a simplified exemplary system where half of the mobile unitshave strong channels and are assigned resource blocks that use 256-QAM(eight bits per data tone) while the second half of the mobile unitshave weak channels and are assigned resource blocks that use 4-QAM (twobits per data tone). In such an example, due to the lower bit loadingused in the downlink resource blocks assigned to the second half of themobile units, the total downlink throughput is much less than themaximum that could be achieved if all of the mobile units had strongchannels that could support resource blocks that used 256-QAM. It wouldbe desirable to be able to increase the net throughput of the LTE andWiFi downlinks by allowing the data symbols of resource blocksassociated with the weak channels to carry additional bits that could bereceived and decoded by mobile units that can see those same data tonesthrough the lens of the strong channels.

Tiled-building-block trellis codes are a family of codes that typicallyuse trellis codes such as convolutional codes and turbo codes (e.g.,parallel concatenated convolutional codes) as distinct codes in amultilevel coded system. Such coded systems are described in detail inU.S. Pat. No. 8,077,290 and M. A. Nairn, J. P. Fonseka, And E. M.Dowling, “A Building-Block Approach for Designing Multilevel CodedSystems,” IEEE Corn Letters, Vol. 19, NO. 1, January 2015, “the Naimreference.” U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,290 is incorporated herein by referenceand the reader is referred to this patent to better understand thebackground of tiled-building-block trellis codes. Abuilding-block-trellis code is used to construct a small compact signalconstellation building block which is called a“coded-constellation-building block,” or, a “building block” for short.A tiling code is also employed to allow the small powerful buildingblocks to be tiled to form larger constellations with a tile spacingthat is selected to preserve the building block's MSED. Associated withthe tiling code is a signal constellation called the “tilingconstellation.” At each constellation point of the tiling constellationis placed a copy of the building block. Each constellation point of thetiling code is referred to as a “tiling point.” The “intra-block MSED”is defined as the MSED between constellation points within a buildingblock, and the “tiling MSED” is defined as the MSED between the centersof the tiled building blocks, i.e., the MSED between tiling points inthe tiling constellation. In terms of coded sequences, the“sequence-level intra-block MSED” is the distance between codedsequences of constellation points within a building block and the“sequence-level tiling MSED” is the distance between coded sequences oftiling points (tile center locations).

It would be desirable to have methods, apparatus and systems forimproving a systems-level data rate on a communications link such asthose used in the downlink of OFDMA systems. It would be desirable tohave a technology that uses tiled-building-block encoding/decoding in aconfiguration that allows different receivers coupled with differentparallel downlink channels with different channel qualities to decodedifferent received versions of the transmitted signal constellation atdifferent levels of resolution. It would be desirable to have atechnology that could reduce or eliminate existing inefficiencies in thedownlink of OFDMA systems to thereby allow the downlink to operate witha significantly higher data rate, thus significantly increasing systemlevel throughput and spectral efficiency.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A first aspect of the invention centers on methods, apparatus, andcommunication systems that involve a headend such as a base station thatis coupled to a first mobile unit via a first communication channel thatis able to support a 2^(m1)-ary signal constellation and a second mobileunit via a second communication channel that is able to support a2^(m2)-ary signal constellation. The first communication channel and thesecond communication channel can optionally correspond to respectivefirst and second wireless communication paths traversed by an OFDMA(orthogonal frequency division multiple access) downlink signal thatcarries a shared/multi-resolution signal constellation. For example,such embodiments can include LTE, WiFi, GigaFi, or any of the types ofsystems mentioned in the background section above or in the detaileddescription below. The first mobile unit is directed to receive a2^(m1′)-ary signal constellation and the second mobile unit is directedto receive a 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation, where m1, m2, m1′ and m2′are positive rational numbers (typically integers), and m1≦m1 andm2′≦m2, m1<m2. The headend (e.g., base station) typically includes anapparatus that includes a first encoder that is coupled to receive afirst stream of bits associated with the first mobile unit. The firstencoder is operative to encode the first stream of bits to form a firstencoded stream of bits. The first encoder is typically implemented as atile encoder, and encodes, for example, in accordance with aconvolutional code, a block code, an LDPC code, a turbo code, or acomposite/concatenation of any of the above mentioned codes. Theapparatus also includes a second encoder that is coupled to receive asecond stream of bits associated with the second mobile unit. The secondencoder is operative to encode the second stream of bits to form asecond encoded stream of bits. The second encoder is typicallyimplemented as a building-block encoder that encodes using any of thetypes of codes that the tile encoder can use as stated above. Theapparatus also includes a signal mapper that is coupled to receive thefirst encoded stream of bits and the second encoded stream of bits. Thesignal mapper is operative to form a symbol stream of symbols bymapping, during each of a plurality of symbol intervals, m1′ number ofcoded bits from the first encoded stream of bits and m2′ number of codedbits from the second encoded stream of bits onto ashared/multi-resolution signal constellation whose constellation pointsare drawn from a 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation associated with ashared/multi-resolution resource block, where m≧m1′+m2′. Thecommunication system is operative to transmit control information todirect the first mobile unit to extract first receiver demodulationinformation from a first sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-aryunderlying constellation and to use the first receiver demodulationinformation in a first decoder to form an estimate of the first streamof bits. The communication system directs the second mobile unit toextract second receiver demodulation information from a secondsub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation. Thesecond mobile unit then uses the second receiver demodulationinformation in a second decoder to form an estimate of the second streamof bits. The first and second receiver demodulation informationtypically correspond to respective first and second sequences of bitmetrics calculated over a frame duration period. The firstsub-constellation portion can sometimes be associated with a 2^(m1′)-arytile constellation and the second sub-constellation portion cansometimes be a 2^(m2′)-ary building block constellation, in which casethe 2^(m1′)-ary constellation can optionally be selected to have anaverage energy E1 that is selected to be received alone by a lowresolution receiver or in combination with additional signalconstellation points in a higher resolution receiver. In suchembodiments, the 2^(m2′)-ary constellation is selected to have has anaverage energy E2 and to be received by a high resolution receiver thatis able to decode a 2^(m)-ary constellation. In other types ofembodiments the first encoder is an upper level encoder in a multi-levelcode and the second encoder is a lower level encoder in the multi-levelcode. In some embodiments, there are additional encoders numbered threethrough L that are coupled to receive third through L^(th) streams ofbits associated with additional third through L^(th) mobile units. Thethird through L^(th) encoders are then operative to encode the thirdthrough L^(th) streams of bits to form third through L^(th) encodedstreams of bits, where L≧3. In such embodiments, the signal mapper isfurther coupled to receive the third through L^(th) encoded streams ofbits and is operative to form the symbol stream by mapping, during eachof the plurality of symbol intervals, m3′ through mL′ sets of coded bitsfrom the third through L^(th) encoded streams of bits onto an2^((m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′))-ary shared/multi-resolution signalconstellation that is a sub-constellation of the 2^(m)-ary underlyingsignal constellation, where m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′≦m.

A second aspect of the invention relates to a second mobile unitapparatus and methods for communicating with a communication system basestation that is coupled to both a first mobile unit apparatus via afirst channel and to the second mobile unit apparatus via a secondchannel. The second mobile unit apparatus includes an OFDMA downlinkreceiver that is configured, in response to control informationassociated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block, to receivedata symbols from selected data tones using a selected one of aplurality of different signal constellations which include a 2^(m1)-arysignal constellation, 2^(m1′)-ary signal constellation, 2^(m2)-arysignal constellation, a 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation and a 2^(m)-arysignal constellation, where m, m1, m1′, m2, and m2′ are positiverational numbers, m1′≦m1, m2′≦m2, m1<m2≦m, and m≧m1′+m2′. The datasymbols are drawn from a shared/multi-resolution signal constellationthat is a sub constellation of the 2^(m)-ary signal constellation. Thesecond mobile unit apparatus includes at least one processor coupled toa memory which holds instructions to be executed by the at least oneprocessor, wherein the instructions cause the at least one processor toperform various action under stored program control. A first such actionincludes receiving the control information from the communication systembase station.

Based upon the control information, a second action includes configuringthe OFDMA downlink receiver to extract second receiver demodulationinformation (e.g., a sequence of m2′ number of bit metrics per symbolover a frame of symbols) from a sequence of data symbols modulated ontorespective OFDM tones associated with the shared/multi-resolutionresource block, and to couple the second receiver demodulationinformation to a decoder that is configured to decode a coded2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation to form a sequence of decoded bits. Insuch a system, the m1′ number bits are associated with a first coded bitstream whose destination is the first mobile unit apparatus. The2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation typically corresponds to a buildingblock constellation, and the first encoded bit stream is typically usedto identify a sequence of tiles. Similar to the first aspect of theinvention described above, additional third through L^(th) streams ofcoded bits can also be transmitted to respective additional thirdthrough L^(th) mobile units via the shared/multi-resolution signalconstellation. In such embodiments, the shared/multi-resolution signalconstellation is typically a 2^((m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′))-aryconstellation, where m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′≦m.

A third aspect of the invention involves an methods, apparatus, andsystems for use in a communication system that is coupled to a receivervia a communication channel. The receiver is directed to receive a2^(m1′)-ary signal constellation and also a 2^(m2′)-ary signalconstellation, where m1′ and m2′ are positive rational numbers (mostoften they are integers). Such an apparatus includes a first encoderthat is coupled to receive a first stream of bits associated with afirst application layer program that can withstand a first bit errorrate. The first encoder is operative to encode the first stream of bitsto form a first encoded stream of bits. A second encoder is also coupledto receive a second stream of bits associated with a second applicationlayer program (or, in some embodiments, a lower layer stream thatcarries control information) that can withstand a second bit error rate.The second bit error rate is greater than the first bit error rate. Thesecond encoder is operative to encode the second stream of bits to forma second encoded stream of bits. The apparatus also includes a signalmapper that is coupled to receive the first encoded stream of bits andthe second encoded stream of bits. The signal mapper is operative toform a symbol stream of symbols by mapping, during each of a pluralityof symbol intervals, m1′ number of coded bits from the first encodedstream of bits and m2′ number of coded bits from the second encodedstream of bits onto a shared/multi-resolution signal constellation whoseconstellation points are drawn from a 2^(m)-ary underlying constellationassociated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block, wherem≧m1+m2′. The communication system is operative to transmit controlinformation to direct the receiver to extract first receiverdemodulation information from a first sub-constellation portion of a2^(m)-ary underlying constellation and to use the first receiverdemodulation information in a first decoder to form an estimate of thefirst stream of bits. The communication system is also operative todirect the receiver to extract second receiver demodulation informationfrom a second sub-constellation portion of the underlying constellationand to use the second receiver demodulation information in a seconddecoder to form an estimate of the second stream of bits. In manyembodiments, the first encoder is a tile encoder, the second encoder isa building-block encoder, and the first and second receiver demodulationinformation corresponds to respective first and second sequences of bitmetrics. The first sub-constellation portion is often associated with a2^(m1′)-ary tile constellation and the second sub-constellation portionis often a 2^(m2′)-ary building block constellation. In otherembodiments, different types of multilevel codes can be used instead oftiled-building-block coded constellations. Any of the code types listedin this section above can be used in different embodiments in the firstand second encoders. In embodiments where variable selective mapping isused, the first sub-constellation portion is a 4-ary cornerconstellation, the second sub-constellation portion is a non-cornerconstellation.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The various novel features of the present invention are illustrated inthe drawings listed below and described in the detailed description thatfollows.

FIG. 1 illustrates a building block encoder whose coded bits are mappedto a QPSK building block signal constellation.

FIG. 2 illustrates a tile encoder whose coded bits are mapped to a QPSKtiling signal constellation.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a tiled-building-block encoderand constellation mapper that is used to multi-level encode twosequences of bits to be mapped onto the a shared/multi-resolutionconstellation such as the 16-QAM constellation as shown in FIG. 4, andto be demodulated and decoded in a receiver, for example in a mobileunit.

FIG. 4 shows a sparsely populated shared/multi-resolution 16-QAMconstellation that is a sub-constellation of a 64-QAM constellation anda 256-QAM constellation.

FIG. 5 shows a sparsely populated shared/multi-resolution 64-QAMconstellation that is a sub-constellation of a 256-QAM constellation.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram that illustrates how SCMA is employed to allowfirst and second mobile units coupled to the OFDMA downlink to decode ashared/multi-resolution QAM constellation in parallel to achieve a nethigher data throughput in the OFDMA downlink.

FIG. 7 is a flow chart illustrating a sequence of actions carried out bya mobile unit to configure its receiver to receive and decode inaccordance with a shared/multi-user resource block.

FIG. 8 shows a tiled-building-block constellation where tiles andbuilding blocks are constructed from more than one stream each, and inthis example, the resulting tiles and building blocks are rectangular asopposed to square.

FIG. 9 shows a sparsely populated shared/multi-resolution 16-QAMconstellation whose parameters are chosen to enforce a constant averagepower and MSED in the tile and building block coded constellations attheir respective levels of resolution.

FIG. 10 shows a sparsely populated shared/multi-resolution 64-QAMconstellation whose parameters are chosen to enforce a constant averagepower and MSED in the tile and building block coded constellations attheir respective levels of resolution.

FIG. 11 shows a shared/multi-resolution 64-QAM constellation thatincludes four corner subsets that each contain four constellationpoints.

FIG. 12 shows a shared/multi-resolution 64-QAM constellation thatincludes four corner subsets that each contain nine constellationpoints.

FIG. 13 shows a shared/multi-resolution 64-QAM constellation thatincludes four corner subsets that each contain twelve constellationpoints.

FIG. 14 shows the LTE 64-QAM constellation to include the Gray codedlabeling of the constellation points.

FIG. 15 is a block diagram representing an exemplary uplink/downlinktype communication system used to implement a communication systemand/or a communication protocol to provide a layered protocol structureusing the tiled building block trellis code techniques of the presentinvention in the physical layer.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The present invention can be used with communication links that transmitmultiple resource blocks in parallel to a plurality of mobile units suchas is in the OFDMA systems described above. For example, the downlink ofthe LTE systems or the downlink of WiFi systems employ four differentconstellations: QPSK (4-QAM), 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM for datatransmission. The signal constellation selected for use with a givenresource block(s) sent to a particular mobile unit is selected basedupon the downlink channel quality at the receiver of the particularmobile unit. If the particular mobile unit is coupled to the basestation by one of the weakest allowable channels, the particular mobileunit will be assigned a resource block(s) that uses the 4-QAMconstellation. If the particular mobile unit is coupled to the basestation by a suitably strong channel, the particular mobile unit will beassigned a resource block(s) that uses the 256-QAM constellation.

The present invention observes that mobile units with strong channelswill also be able to decode the resource blocks associated with the weakchannels, but will see the received signal constellation associated withthose resource blocks through the (high resolution) lens of a strongchannel. Hence the present invention introduces the concept of SignalConstellation Multiple Access (SCMA) which can be applied in OFDMAsystems to improve the net throughput in the downlink. In accordancewith SCMA, certain resource blocks can be designated as sharedmulti-user/multi-resolution resource blocks where additional coded databits are encoded onto data symbols associated with the resource blocksthat would otherwise only be associated with a weak channel. Thetiled-building-block constellation approach is preferably used in orderto allow two or more different mobile units to simultaneously receiveand extract their respective coded bit streams from the samereceived/shared signal constellation. When the spacing's between tilingpoints and building block points are properly selected as described inmore detail below, the resulting constellation sent on the weak channelscan be designed to be viewed as a multi-resolution constellation.

Consider an example where a first mobile unit in an LTE system has aweak channel and is assigned a 4-QAM constellation and where a secondmobile unit has a stronger channel and is assigned a 64-QAMconstellation. A tiled-building-block constellation can then be formedby mapping, during each symbol interval on each data tone, two codedbits associated with the first mobile onto a 4-QAM tiling constellationand two additional coded bits associated with the second mobile unitonto a 4-QAM building block constellation whose intra-building-blockconstellation point spacing matches the spacing of the LTE 64-QAMconstellation. The building block points are placed around each tilingpoint to form the coded tiled-building-block constellation. Theresulting coded tiled-building-block constellation will thus carry fourbits instead of two bits per data tone.

Upon reception, the first mobile unit with a weak channel can bedirected to view the received signal associated with theshared/multi-user resource block at low resolution (distant view) asthough it was only made up of the 4-QAM tiling constellation. In thiscase the first mobile unit would extract bit metrics from the receivedconstellation assuming it was a 4-QAM constellation. Alternatively, thefirst mobile unit can be directed to view the received signal associatedwith the shared/multi-user resource block at high resolution (closeview/zoomed in view) to thereby see a subset of 64-QAM constellation. Inthis case, the first mobile unit would extract bit metrics from thereceived constellation assuming it was a sparse 64-QAM constellation,and would only compute bit metrics associated with the upper two levelsof the received constellation's multilevel coding (i.e., thetile-encoded bits). Meanwhile, a second mobile unit with strong channelwould be directed to view the received signal associated with theshared/multi-user resource block at high resolution, e.g., as a subsetof the 64-QAM constellation, using a standard receiver/decoderconfigured to receive the 64-QAM constellation. This can be achieved byextracting bit metrics from the received constellation assuming it was asparse 64-QAM constellation, and only extracting the bit metricsassociated with the building block bits (lower two levels of multilevelcoding) on the 64-QAM constellation. The second mobile unit can thus runits decoder to decode only the building block bits of the receivedtiled-building-block coded constellation. One way to achieve this is toset all bit metrics except for the bits on the constellation associatedwith the building block bits to a fixed value in the currently available64-QAM constellation decoder. In the decoder in the second mobile unit,decoded bits associated with bits that correspond to bit metrics thathave been set to a known value will typically be discarded because theydo not correspond to bits in a bit stream directed to the second mobileunit. Note that since the 64-QAM constellation is a subset of the256-QAM constellation, the bit metrics could have alternatively beencomputed with respect to the 256-QAM constellation.

In this patent application the words “high resolution,” “lowresolution,” and “multi-resolution” have specifically defined meanings.For example, in the LTE system, 4-QAM, 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAMconstellations are defined. If a first mobile unit is to receive atiled-building coded constellation through a weak channel and is goingto view this constellation through the lens of the resolution of a2^(m1)-ary tiling constellation, then the first mobile unit is said tobe viewing or receiving the tiled-building coded constellation at “lowresolution.” Viewing the constellation at low resolution can also beviewed as a “distant” view, or a “zoomed-out” view. If a second mobileunit is to receive the same tiled-building coded constellation through astrong channel and is going to view this constellation through the lensof a 2^(m)-ary constellation where m≧m1+m2, where m2 is the number ofcoded bits in the building block coded constellation, then the secondmobile unit is said to be viewing or receiving the tiled-building codedconstellation at “high resolution.” A high resolution view is alsoreferred to as a “close-up” view or a “zoomed-in” view. So the tilingconstellation typically corresponds to the “low resolution” or“distant-view” of the received constellation seen through the lens ofthe weak channel, while the building block constellation typicallycorresponds to a “high resolution” or “zoomed-in” view of the receivedconstellation seen through the lens of a strong channel. As discussedabove, a receiver coupled to the downlink via a weak channel can viewthe received constellation at low resolution or can alternatively viewthe constellation at a zoomed-in high resolution, but then only computebit metrics for the upper coding level(s) of the received multi-levelcoded bits (i.e., the tile coded bits). Also, the term “selectivemapping” is used to describe a constellation mapping process or systemwhere different bits are mapped to a shared/multi-resolution signalconstellation that are selected from different streams of coded bits. A“fixed selective mapping” is a selective mapping where bits from thedifferent streams are pre-selected to always map to the same bitpositions in the mapping. A “variable selective mapping” is a selectivemapping where bits from the different streams can be selected to map tothe certain bit positions in the mapping as a function of other bits inthe same symbol or as a function of other bits in a primary stream.

A multi-level coded constellation whose upper coding levels are to bereceived/decoded by a first receiver (e.g., inside of a first mobileunit) and whose lower coding levels are to be received/decoded by asecond receiver (e.g., inside of a second mobile unit) is said to be a“multi-resolution” constellation. Directives regarding multi-resolutionconstellations (e.g. tone assignments, bit stream sources and/or bitstream destinations, constellation sizes, and the like) are typicallyspecified in control information. In general, as discussed in furtherdetail below, more than two mobile units can be directed, via controlinformation sent from the base station to the mobile units, to receivedifferent coding levels of a multilevel coded constellation that isassociated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block. Softwareinvolved in creating, communicating, and/or configuring hardware orsoftware modules in response to information in resource blocks and/orshared/multi-resolution resource blocks is called the “coding controlsub layer” herein.

In certain preferred embodiments involving LTE and WiFi, SCMA can beused to augment OFDMA to thereby increase the net throughput from thebase station in the downlink direction. In such embodiments, this can beachieved by only making minor modifications to the base station softwareused to control the encoding of resource blocks and also making minormodifications to the mobile unit software used to control the decodingof resource blocks (coding control sub layer). The lower level codingand decoding software modules (coding DSP sub layer) can remainunchanged, with the minor modifications coming at a coding control sublayer that determines what portions of what resource blocks need to beencoded or decoded with the existing coding DSP sub-layer softwaremodules. It is also possible to make additional optimizations or changesby modifying the coding DSP sub layer, for example, by employing adifferent building blocks such as the 4D building block as described inconnection with FIGS. 10, 13-14 of the U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,790 patent.

As discussed in the final paragraph of the U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,790patent, it should be noted that the term “trellis code” can refer tovarious types of codes such as a convolutional code or a convolutionalcode that has been augmented as a concatenated code to form a Turbocode. Turbo codes are the type of trellis codes used in LTE and WiFiOFDMA systems. The U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,790 patent goes on to state thata “trellis code” can alternatively be augmented to include aconcatenation with a block code. Therefore, in this application, insteadof using “tiled-building-block trellis” as a modifier for “code,”“encoder,” “decoder,” etc, the modifier “tiled-building-block” will beused instead. This is done to avoid any confusion and to further allowother types of codes to be used in the tile and/or building blockencoder such as pure block codes or LDPC codes. For example, instead ofreciting a “trellis encoder” as in the U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,790 patent,the instant patent application would recite “encoder,” so thatadditional types of encoders like pure block encoders and LDPC encoderswould also be explicitly included.

Referring to FIG. 1, a building block encoder 105 is shown whose codedbits are outputted and mapped to a Gray coded 4-QAM building block. Thebuilding block encoder 105 can encode using a convolutional code, aturbo code, a block code, or any other kind of code such as a lowdensity parity check (LDPC) code, or a constrained turbo blockconvolutional (CTBC) code (see U.S. Pat. No. 8,537,919). Thebuilding-block coded bits generated by the building-block encoder 105can alternatively be mapped to different types of building-block codedconstellations such as the 4D building block coded constellationdiscussed in the U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,790 patent. Also, other twodimensional building blocks such as a 16-QAM constellation could beused. In some embodiments, during each symbol interval, one or more bitsin the stream are passed through the building block encoder and otherbits are left uncoded prior to mapping to the building block codedconstellation. In general, to within energy and distance constraints asdiscussed in further detail below, any 2D or higher dimensionalconstellation can be selected to be the building block codedconstellation. Alternative embodiments are also possible where data bitsare mapped to directly to the building block coded constellation withouta being encoded by the building block encoder.

Referring to FIG. 2, an example tiling encoder 205 is shown whose codedbits are outputted and mapped to a Gray coded 4-QAM constellation. Thetiling encoder 205 can encode using a convolutional code, a turbo code,a block code, or any other kind of code such as a low density paritycheck (LDPC) code, or a constrained turbo block convolutional (CTBC)code. The tile coded bits generated by the tile encoder 205 canalternatively be mapped to different types of tiling constellations suchas 16-QAM and 64-QAM constellations as specified for use in resourceblocks in LTE and WiFi. In some embodiments, one or more bits in thestream are passed through the tile encoder and other bits are leftuncoded prior to mapping to the tiling constellation. Alternativeembodiments are also possible where data bits are mapped directly to thetiling constellation without being encoded by the tiling encoder.

Referring to FIG. 3, a tiled-building-block encoder and signal mapper105, 205, 310 is shown for transmitting a modulated signal into achannel that is then received by a demodulator 315 and decoded byseparate decoders 320 and 325. The tiled-building-block encoder andsignal mapper includes the building block encoder 105 and the tileencoder 205 that can be embodied in any of their variations oralternative embodiments such as those previously described in connectionwith FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. The outputs of the building block encoder 105and the tile encoder 205 are coupled to the inputs of a signal mapper310. This allows the coded bits from the encoders 105 and 205 to bemapped by the signal mapper 310 to a tiled-building-block codedconstellation. For example, if the building block encoder of FIG. 1 isused so that there are two coded bits per building block, and if thetile encoder of FIG. 2 is used so that there are two coded bits for tileselection, and if signal mapper 310 is a 256-QAM signal mapper asillustrated in the embodiment of FIG. 3, then the signal mapper will mapa sparsely populated tiled-building-block constellation whoseconstellation points form a subset of the 256-QAM constellation as shownin FIG. 4. In this example, the 256-QAM constellation can be referred toas the “high resolution constellation” or the “underlyingconstellation.” Note that the constellation points in FIG. 4 have onlyfour-bit labels. Since the constellation points of a 256-QAMconstellation have eight-bit labels, four all-zero remaining bits can beappended to the labels shown in FIG. 4 to arrive at the 256-QAMeight-bit labels. If such zero bits are appended, these are shown as the“zero bits” input to the 256-QAM signal mapper 310. In some embodiments,other fixed labels besides all zeros can be appended, and they need notalways be appended to the least significant bits, and exactly how thesebits are appended will depend on the bit labeling scheme of theunderlying constellation. For example, the four additional bit labels ofthe standard 256-QAM constellation corresponding to the signal pointschosen in FIG. 4 could be added to extend the four bit labels of FIG. 4to the standard eight bit labels of the underlying 256-QAMconstellation. In some embodiments, one or more uncoded bits couldadditionally or alternatively be added to the extend the bit labels. Theuncoded bits are typically added to the most significant bits or areinserted between the tile coded bits and the building-block encoded bitsas opposed to being inserted at the least significant bits. Also, the“zero bits and/or uncoded bits” as per FIG. 3 are optional and are notneeded/used in some embodiments. Further discussion of the signaldemodulator 315 and the decoders 320 and 325 is provided below inconnection with FIGS. 6 and 7.

In alternative embodiments, the signal mapper 310 can be configured tomap the encoded bits onto a 64-QAM underlying constellation or othersized constellations as opposed to the 256-QAM constellation. Forexample, building block coded constellation and the tile encodedconstellation could both be selected to be 4-QAM while the highresolution constellation (underlying constellation) used in the mapper310 could be selected to be 64-QAM instead of 256-QAM. A key concept isfor the signal mapper 310 to map to a fixed known higher resolutionconstellation so that the tiled-building-block coded constellation canbe used in connection with a shared multi-user/multi-resolution resourceblock as described above. In the context of the LTE and WiFi example,note that if the building block is the building block of FIG. 1, thenthe tiling constellation of FIG. 2 can be selected to be 4-QAM, 16-QAM,or 64-QAM, depending on channel and power parameters. If the tilingconstellation is 4-QAM or 16-QAM, the resulting tiledbuilding-block-coded constellation can be made to be a sparselypopulated subset of the 256-QAM constellation. In the case that thetiling constellation is 64-QAM, then the multi-user/shared constellationassociated with the multi-user/shared resource block will include theentire 256-QAM constellation. In these examples, a first mobile unitwith a weak channel is configured to receive the tiling code on a 4-QAM,16-QAM, or 64-QAM tiling constellation and a second mobile unit withaccess to the 256-QAM quality channel would then additionally receive aset of building block encoded bits. Other configurations are alsopossible. The spacing of the constellation points within the buildingblock and the spacing between building blocks will be selected inaccordance with the underlying constellation, the condition of the twochannels, the selected codes used in the encoders 105, 205 and therequired performance levels of the two channels.

In other types of alternative embodiments, for example, as discussed inconnection with FIG. 8 below, FIG. 3 can be modified to accept data frommore than two stream sources. In such embodiments, tiles and/or buildingblocks can optionally be built from more than one stream each, and therecan be multiple tile encoders/decoders 205/320 and multiple buildingblock encoder/decoders 105/325. Also, the stream sources can includecontrol stream sources in addition to or in lieu of data stream sources,and may be completely control stream sources. In general, theencoder/decoded by L respective decoders. The stream sources can be anytype of bits, such application layer bit streams, or other kinds of bitstreams, such as control bit streams decoder of FIG. 3 can send Lstreams which can be encoded by L respective encoders and for theapplication layer or lower communication layers.

Referring to FIG. 4, an example consisting of a 16-arytiled-building-block coded constellation that is a sparsely populatedsubset of a 256-QAM constellation is shown. The constellation shown inFIG. 4 is suitable for use in the shared/multi-resolution resourceblocks as described above. Note that the standard 256-QAM constellationhas signal points at locations (I,Q) where I and Q are odd integers inthe range [−15d, +15d], where d corresponds to the amplitude scaling ofthe 256QAM constellation to adjust the transmitted power. In theconstellation shown in FIG. 4, the tile centers are located at (±9d,±9d). The constellation point placement as shown in FIG. 4 was selectedso that the average transmitted power of the tiled building blockconstellation in FIG. 4 is similar to that of the 4-QAM constellationused by the first mobile unit as per the LTE and WiFi standards.

The tiled-building-block constellation of FIG. 4 which uses the {±7d,±11d} constellation points can be viewed as being a subset of the LTE256-QAM constellation/channel. The tiled-building block constellation ofFIG. 4 is used to transmit two bits from a first stream d₁ using a 4-QAMtile constellation while maintaining spacing between the buildingblocks, with a minimum spacing of 18d between tile centers, to maintainthe desired performance of channel 1 with the LTE 4-QAM channel. Thissame constellation of FIG. 4 is also used to transmit two bits from asecond stream d₂ to form a 4-QAM building block whoseintra-building-block points are spaced with a minimum spacing of 4dbetween points within a building block, thereby maintaining similarperformance to the LTE 64-QAM channel. Note that the constellation-pointindices shown on the I and Q axes of FIG. 4 are given in terms ofmultiples the distance d, where 2d represents the spacing ofconstellation points on a 256-QAM constellation such as the onespecified for use in LTE. However, the spacing between theintra-building-block points of 4d corresponds to the spacing, 2c, whichalso corresponds to the spacing of the LTE 64-QAM constellation. Since cis approximately 2d, the points within building blocks in FIG. 4 arespaced to maintain the desired performance of the LTE 64-QAMconstellation.

The sparsely populated 16-QAM sub-constellation of FIG. 4 can thus beviewed to be a subset of both the 64-QAM constellation and/or the256-QAM constellation. In such cases the 64-QAM constellation would beconsidered to be the underlying constellation because the intra buildingblock constellation points are spaced in accordance with the minimumspacing of the 64-QAM constellation. The 16-QAM constellation of FIG. 4sends two bits from stream d₁ on the 4-QAM tiling constellation and alsosends two bits two bits from stream d₂ on the building blockconstellation. In accordance with aspects of the present invention,instead of using a sparsely populated constellation as shown in FIG. 4,more constellation points of the underlying 64-QAM constellation or thehigher resolution 256-QAM constellation could be sent each symbolinterval. For example, the building block could be made to be 16-QAMand/or the tiling code could be made to be 16-QAM, and the intrabuilding block spacing could be made in accordance with either the64-QAM constellation or the 256-QAM constellation.

Referring to FIG. 5, an example of a 64-ary tiled-building-block codedconstellation that is a subset of the LTE 256-QAM constellation isshown. In this figure the tiles are shown and the building block pointsare assumed to come from FIG. 1 and coincide with the four corners ofeach tile. In this figure the tile constellation is a 16-QAMconstellation whose tile centers (e.g., (4d,12d)) were selected so thatthe average power in the 16-QAM constellation received by the firstmobile unit would coincide with the correct average powers of the 16-QAMconstellation as per the LTE and WiFi standards.

Referring to FIG. 6, a block diagram of an OFDMA system that has beenaugmented with SCMA is shown. A multi-resolution tiled-building-blocktransmitter 605 is used to encode at least some resource blocks withcoded data bits from at least a first stream whose destination is afirst mobile unit associated with a weak channel and also with codeddata bits from a second stream whose destination is a second mobile unitassociated with a strong channel. For example, the low resolution signalconstellation corresponds to an 2^(m1)-ary tile constellation associatedwith a first stream of coded bits, d₁, and the higher resolutionconstellation corresponds to a 2^(m)-ary constellation that includes a2^(m2)-ary building block coded constellation as a sub constellation. Inthis example, the coded bits mapped to the 2^(m2)-ary building blockcoded constellation are associated with a second stream of coded bits,d₂.

To better understand demodulation, bit metric calculation and decoding,see FIG. 3 and note blocks 315, 320, and 325. For example, block 315 canbe implemented in blocks 620 and 625, the tile decoder 630 can generallycorrespond to the tile decoder 320, and the building block decoder 635can generally correspond to the building block decoder 325. Therefore,again consider FIG. 3 and as per FIGS. 1, 2 and 4, assume thebuilding-block encoder 105 and the tile encoder 205 each encode onto4-QAM building block and tiling constellations, and assume the signalmapper maps to an underlying 256-QAM constellation. Also assume that thetwo bits per 256-QAM symbol that go into the tile encoder 205 come froma stream d₁ whose destination is mobile unit #1 618, and that the twobits per 256-QAM symbol that go into the building-block encoder 105 comefrom a stream d₂ whose destination is mobile unit #2 628. Although LTEresource block carries both data and control symbols, for the sake ofsimplicity, assume a single resource block to have 168 data symbols persub-frame (1 msec). The demodulator 315 will provide two bit metrics persymbol, or a total of 168×2=336 bit metrics to each of the tilingdecoder 320/630 (via 620) and the building block decoder 325/635 (via625). If uncoded bits are in use, then additional bit metrics can becalculated corresponding to any additional bit labels that represent theuncoded bits. If any (e.g., four) zero bits (or, in general “dummy labelbits”) were inserted to extend the four-bit labels in FIG. 4 to theeight-bit labels of the underlying 256-QAM constellation, then no bitmetrics need to be computed for these dummy/extension bit labelportions. In the weak-channel mobile unit 618, bit metrics need only becomputed for the bit labels that correspond to the tile encoded bits,e.g., the two MSBs of the bit labels shown in FIG. 4. In thestrong-channel mobile unit 628, bit metrics need only be computed forthe bit labels that correspond to the building-block encoded bits, e.g.,the two LSBs of the bit labels shown in FIG. 4. The tile decoder 320,630 will then decode a frame of 336 bits (4-QAM channel) and thebuilding block decoder 325, 635 will also decode a frame of 336 bits(4-QAM channel). In an alternative embodiment of the same structure withthe same tile and building block sub-constellations, the signal mapper310 could map to a 64-QAM underlying constellation, and two less dummybit labels would be needed.

As mentioned previously, the tiled-building-block encoded constellationcan be used to send data in accordance with shared/multi-resolutionresource blocks associated with the SCMA augmentation feature. As shownin FIG. 6, the tiled-building-block encoded constellation is transmittedvia the OFDMA downlink to be received by two (or more, not shown) mobileunits. The tiled-building-block encoded constellation simultaneouslypasses in parallel through a weak downlink channel 610 and a strongdownlink channel 615. The output of the weak downlink channel 610 isreceived by a first mobile unit via a low resolution receiver 620. Thelow resolution receiver is configured to receive in a lowresolution/distant view mode, e.g., 4-QAM, 16-QAM, or 64-QAM. Thereceiver 620 can be configured to extract bit metrics from the tilingconstellation and to decode the tiling code using the tile code decoder630. As discussed earlier, in some embodiments, the receiver 620 canview the received constellation as if the tiling constellation were sentalone, in which case the building block will be viewed as additionalnoise. In other embodiments, the receiver 620 will be configured to viewthe received constellation using a high resolution/zoomed in mode, butto then only compute bit metrics associated with the upper coding levelsof the multi-level code (tile coded bit levels). Depending on which typeof embodiment is selected, the tile decoder 630 will use the bit metricsfrom the appropriate sized constellation that correspond to the tileencoded bits. The output of the strong channel 615 is received by asecond mobile unit whose receiver 625 is configured to receive in a highresolution/zoomed-in mode, e.g., 64-QAM or 256-QAM. The receiver 625will thus be configured to extract bit metrics from the building-blockbits (low intra-block MSED bits of the lower level of multi-level code)of the higher order QAM constellation and to decode the building-blockcode using the building-block decoder 635.

Referring to FIG. 7, a flow chart is shown that illustrates a sequenceof actions carried out in a mobile unit or other type of communicationsdevice that includes logic or computer instructions to configure itselfto receive and decode an OFDMA downlink or other type of informationstreams such as associated with a cable modem downlink that isassociated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block. As discussedin further detail below, in certain systems the receiver apparatus neednot be located inside a mobile unit, and the communication system neednot be OFDMA or even multi-user. To keep the discussion focused in aspecific embodiment, FIG. 7 will be discussed in connection with thesame exemplary multi-user OFDMA downlink type embodiments as describedabove.

The present invention allows data streams to be decoded irrespective ofthe transmission of additional bits. For example, if all streams areindividually turbo coded, the bit metrics (likelihood values) of allcoded bits can be extracted from the received signal the standard way asis known to those of skill in the art and as discussed in Isaka, M.;Imai, H., “On the iterative decoding of multilevel codes,” in SelectedAreas in Communications, IEEE Journal on, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 935-943,May 2001. In an embodiment where the constellation of FIG. 4 is receivedby the first mobile unit coupled with the OFDMA downlink via the weakchannel, the first mobile unit will compute its bit metrics based uponlow resolution tile constellation, i.e., the tile center locations ofFIG. 4. These bit metrics can be computed by assuming that the receivedconstellation only consists of the tile-encoded constellation.Alternatively, assuming that the full tiled-building-block constellationhas been received via the underlying constellation, only the bit metricsassociated with the tile-encoded bits can be extracted as describedabove. These bit metrics corresponding to the tile encoded bits will bepassed to the decoder of stream d₁ which will act as a tile decoder in amulti-level code. Meanwhile, when the constellation of FIG. 4 isreceived by second mobile unit coupled to the OFDMA downlink via thestrong channel, the second mobile unit will compute its bit metricsbased upon the building-block encoded bits so as to be able to decodethe inter-building-block points, e.g., as shown in FIG. 4. These bitmetrics will be passed to the decoder of stream d₂ which will act as abuilding block decoder in the multi-level code. The standard 2^(m)-aryhigh resolution demodulator can thus be made to only extract a subset ofbit metrics and the existing decoder for a smaller sized stream (e.g.,4-QAM) can be used to decode the building block related bits by asdiscussed above. The data streams d₁ and d₂ will then be decoded, forexample, using the standard turbo decoding software modules alreadylocated in the coding DSP sub layer within the LTE and/or WiFi enabledmobile units. Typically the streams d₁ and d₂ will be respectivelydecoded by the decoders 630, 635 in the separate mobile units 618, 628.

In the context of an OFDMA multi-user communications system, the mobileunit apparatus receives a shared/multi-resolution resource block fromthe base station. In the action 705, the mobile unit apparatus analyzesthe received resource block to direct its OFDMA downlink receiver to beconfigured in accordance therewith. At action 710, the mobile unitconfigures its receiver to receive the high resolution constellation,e.g., 64-QAM or 256-QAM in the OFDMA systems described above. At action715, the mobile unit configures its decoder to identify a subset of thebit metrics to be calculated and used while decoding the signalconstellation on the data symbols associated with the shared/multi-userresource block. Bit metrics corresponding to bits that do not correspondto building block bits need not be computed and will not typically besent to a the building block decoder. At action 720, the decoder 635 inthe mobile unit 628 decodes the building block coded constellation overthe sub-frame (e.g., 168 data symbols) as discussed above.

It should be noted that the flow chart 700 focuses on the mobile unitwith the strong channel who decodes the building block as a subconstellation of the high resolution constellation. In the case wherethe first mobile unit views the received constellation as onlyconsisting of a tile encoded constellation, the first mobile unit whodecodes the tiling constellation at lower resolution need not bemodified. This is because in such exemplary embodiments, the firstmobile unit who decodes the tiling constellation is blind to thebuilding block information that can only be seen through the zoomed-inlens of the higher resolution constellation as seen through the strongerchannel. In embodiments where the first mobile unit is configured toview the received constellation in through the zoomed-in lens of theunderlying constellation but as viewed through the weaker channel, thefirst mobile would only compute bit metrics related to tile encoded bitsas discussed above in connection with 320, 630. For example, thestandard LTE turbo decoder software modules at the coding DSP softwarelayer would be used, but the bit metrics calculations portion would bemodified as described above.

In the discussions above, for example in the discussion of FIG. 4, atiled-building-block constellation was used to transmit two additionalbits of channel 3 along with a starting QPSK constellation of channel 1.In the previous discussions, this tiled-building-block constellation wasassumed to be sent at the starting QPSK constellation's original symbolrate. However, a multi-user SCMA system that uses OFDM or FDM canalternatively be designed to provide the same original net data transferrate by adding more bits to the starting constellation and then slowingdown the symbol rate. For example, the original data transfer rate ofthe QPSK channel 1 can be achieved by using the constellation of FIG. 4and lowering the symbol rate by one half. On the other hand, as a resultof slowing down the symbol rate, the tone spacing in OFDM (or bandwidthin FDM) can be lowered which allows introduction of more tones in OFDM(or more channels in FDM) within the same allocated bandwidth. Theintroduction of more tones (or channels) eventually leads to the sameincrease in the overall data transmission rate. Because all signals atthe newly added OFDM tones or FDM frequency bands require additionalpower, such improvements require the total power to be increased.However, the slowdown in the data transfer rate increases the symbolenergy and thereby improves the performance in all OFDM tones or FDMbands. Effectively, the increase in the symbol energy expands the signalconstellation. In the above example, by slowing down the symbol rate bya factor of ½, the signal constellation expands by a scaling factor of√{square root over (2)}, thereby doubling all squared distances on theconstellation. As a result, the performance of each transmissionimproves due to the slowing down of the symbol rate. This performanceimprovement allows more flexibility in selecting building blocks andtiles. It thus becomes easier to construct tiled building blockconstellations involving more combinations of different types ofchannels. For example, if two bits of channel 1 and two bits of channel2 are transmitted together at a slower rate, a 16-QAMtiled-building-block constellation can be constructed that would ensurethat both channels can achieve the desired LTE performance. SCMAembodiments as discussed here can thus be used to increase the net datatransfer rate, improve performance, lower the symbol rate, relax designconstraints and parameter tightness, or provide various combinationsthereof.

The above disclosure focused on specific embodiments of the presentinvention that used SCMA to improve the OFDMA downlink by sharing asignal constellation between two mobile units. At this point, considerthe general case of N streams, d₁, d₂, . . . , d_(N), where each streamd_(i) employs a constellation C_(i). Let D₁ ², D₂ ², . . . , D_(N) ² bethe minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED) values of theconstellations C₁, C₂, . . . , C_(N) respectively. Without loss ofgenerality, assume that D₁≧D₂≧ . . . ≧D_(N). Let the size of eachconstellation C_(i) be 2^(mi) so that the stream d transmits mi numberof bits per symbol interval using its constellation C_(i). If the sameaverage transmitted energy is used by all constellations C₁, C₂, . . . ,C_(N), it follows from D_(i)≧D_(i+1), that mi≦m(i+1), i=1, 2, . . . ,N−1. Hence, when transmitting a stream d_(i) with a lower value of i,the throughput of the link is lower due to its smaller 2^(mi)-aryconstellation. Throughout this discussion, streams d_(i) with lowervalues of i are referred to as “lower streams” and those with highervalues of i are referred to as “higher streams.” Using this terminology,d₁ is the lowest stream and d_(N) is the highest stream.

In its more general forms, selective mapping in accordance with thepresent invention involves modification of the signal constellationC_(i) associated with any lower stream d_(i), to additionally includedata from one or more different higher streams, j>i. For example, byusing a larger signal constellation, in addition to the mi bits of thelower stream d_(i), mj′ bits from a higher stream, j>i, could also besent during each symbol interval. Similarly, a larger signalconstellation could be constructed to send, in addition to the mi bitsof the lower stream d_(i), a set containing L number of higher streamsj_(k)>i, k=1, 2, . . . , L, from which bits will be transmitted duringeach symbol interval.

First consider the case where L=1 so that only one higher stream j>i isused to provide additional bits each symbol interval. The transmissionof mi bits from the lower stream d_(i) and mj′ bits from the higherstream d_(j) requires the constellation C_(i) to be expanded to largerconstellation of size 2^((mi+mj′)). This larger constellation ispreferably constructed by following the tiled-building-block approach asdescribed above and in U.S. Pat. No. 8,077,790. In this example, a2^(mj′)-ary constellation C_(j′) is first selected for the transmissionof mj′ bits from stream d_(j). By design, a MSED value of D_(j) ² or avalue close to it is preferably selected for use in C_(j′) to therebymaintain about the same performance (bit error rate, BER) for the streamd_(j). Next the constellation C_(j′) is viewed as a building block, anda 2^((mi+mj′))-ary tiled-building-block coded constellation ispreferably constructed by viewing the constellation C_(i) as a tilingconstellation and placing a copy of the building block C_(j′) at eachtiling point therein. This will result in a tiled-building-block codedconstellation having 2^(mi) copies of C_(j′), with each one centeredaround a tiling point C_(i). The dimensions of the constellation C_(j′)and the spacing between copies of C_(j′) can be adjusted to achieve theexpected performance of steams d_(i) and d_(j). When the ratio D_(j)²/D_(i) ² is small, any degradation in performance of streams d_(i) andd_(j) caused by transmitting mj′ bits of stream d_(j) along with mi bitsof stream d_(i) becomes negligible, particularly when powerful codessuch as turbo codes are employed in both streams d_(i) and d_(j). Thefixed selective mapping policy used within the building block to mapcombinations of different mj′ bits from stream d_(j) to 2^(mj′)different points of the building block C_(j′) can be chosen depending onthe requirement of the code used for stream d_(j). Similarly, themapping policy used to assign combinations of mi bits of stream d_(i) todifferent tiles can be chosen according to the requirements of the codeused in stream d_(i). When the above approach is applied, the throughputof the link that would otherwise only be used to send the lower streamd_(i) is increased from mi to (mi+mj′) coded bits per interval.

Next consider the more general case where more than just two streams aremapped into a single tiled-building-block coded constellation, i.e.,where L>1. In this case, there is one lower stream d_(i) and a pluralityof higher streams, d_(j1), d_(j2), . . . d_(jL) (j_(k)>i, k=1, 2, . . ., L), each feeding mj1′, mj2′, . . . , mjL′ bits respectively withj₁<j₂< . . . <j_(L), instead of a single higher steam d_(j). By definingms=mj1′+mj2′+ . . . +mjL′, a total of ms number of additional bits fromhigher streams d_(j1), d_(j2), . . . , d_(jL) will be combined with themi bits from stream d_(i) and transmitted therewith during each symbolinterval using a 2^((mi+ms))-ary constellation. This 2^((mi+ms))-aryconstellation can be constructed using the same tiled-building-blockapproach described above.

Based on the discussion of the paragraph above, the tiled-building-blockconstellation can be constructed by starting from a building block totransmit mjL′ bits of stream d_(jL), and applying the tiled buildingblock principle successively L times to obtain the final 2^((mi+ms))-aryconstellation. Note also that building blocks and tiling constellationsneed not be two dimensional but can be built up from 1D constellations.For example, the 2D building blocks as shown in FIGS. 1, 4 and 5 couldbe constructed as two separate 1D building blocks. For example, the Icomponent of the building block could come from stream d_(jL), while theQ component of the building block could come from stream d_(jL-1). Ifthe 2D building blocks shown in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 were built up this wayas two 1D building blocks, then the 2D building block would appear torectangular as opposed to square, and would be encoded and decoded astwo 1D building blocks as opposed to a single 2D building block. Inanother similar example, a 16-QAM tiling constellation could be built upwith, for example, four coded bits per symbol, with two bits taken fromstream d1 and one bit each taken from streams d2 and d3. This could leadto tile constellations that are elongated (rectangular) as opposed tothe square shape as shown in FIG. 5. Similarly, tiles can also be 1D.

As an example, consider an embodiment that uses a 32-QAM tiled buildingblock constellation shown in FIG. 8 to transmit one bit of channel 1(4-QAM), two bits of channel 2 (16-QAM), one bit of channel 3 (64-QAM)and one bit of channel 4 (256-QAM) during each interval. In thisexample, the mapping has been selected to transmit the bit position 1(MSB) of the 32-QAM constellation from channel 1, bit positions 2 and 3from channel 2, bit position 4 from channel 3 and the bit position 5from channel 4. In FIG. 8, bit positions 1, 2 and 3 are shown above eachtile, and two additional LSBs (bit positions 1,2, not shown) would thenindicate the four corners of each tile in accordance with the buildingblock bits as per FIG. 1, similar to the two LSBs shown on each tile inFIG. 4. The rectangular building blocks are formed by the bit of channel3 and the bit of channel 4. The spacing between points of buildingblocks are selected to maintain a minimum separation of 4d for channel 3and a minimum separation of 2d for channel 4 to maintain the desired LTEperformance for channels 4 and 5. Building blocks are spaced along the Idirection to maintain a minimum separation of 8d between the centers ofthe building blocks which is sufficient to maintain the desired LTEperformance for the two bits from channel 2. Similarly, FIG. 8 uses aminimum separation of 18d between the centers of building blocks alongthe Q direction to maintain the desired LTE performance of channel 1.Focusing on the two 1-dimensional PAM (pulse amplitude modulation)components along I and Q directions of the 32-QAM constellation of FIG.8, it can be easily found that the average energy of the PAM along the Idirection is 81d² while that of the PAM along the Q direction is 85 d².Comparing with the standard 256-QAM constellation which uses 85d² alongeach of its I and Q 1-dimensional PAM components, the constellation inFIG. 8 uses slightly a lower transmitted energy. If desired, theconstellation in FIG. 8 can be scaled, preferably along I, to have thesame transmitted energy as the standard 256-QAM.

In general, building blocks and tiles can be formed with bits frommultiple channels. Further, when using building blocks to form a tiledbuilding block constellation, it is possible to adjust the relativespacing between the building blocks to maintain the desired distancesfor different bit positions. In addition, the building blocks can berotated or flipped to obtain the tiled building block constellation tomeet the distance and/or power requirements.

So far, we have been discussing transmitting one or more bits ofmultiple channels simultaneously each interval. Let us consider thefirst embodiment that transmits two bits of channel 1 and two bits ofchannel 3 using the tiled building block constellation in FIG. 4. It isimportant to note that the two bits transmitted from each channel 1 (or3) can actually come from two different users data streams. Hence, theconstellation in FIG. 4 can actually serve either two or three fourusers. Similarly, the constellation shown in FIG. 8 can serve four orfive users. In general, when a tiled building block constellation isused to transmit multiple channels during each interval, if any channeltransmits multiple bits during each interval, those multiple bits cancome from multiple users that are assigned to the same channel level. Inthe receiver(s), similar to the discussion of the demodulation anddecoding aspects of FIG. 3 and FIG. 6, bit metrics would be computed fora given stream over a sub-frame, and these bit metrics would be sent toa decoder that is configured to decode based on the number of bits to bedecoded in each sub-frame, e.g., 336 bits per sub-frame for a 4-QAMchannel assuming single resource block assignment. In the case of 1Dchannels, an additional decoder would be needed to decode short bitstream of just 168 bits (one bit per symbol for 168 symbols per frame).

As discussed above, higher dimensional building blocks can also be used.For example, when the 4D building block discussed in U.S. Pat. No.8,077,790 is used, then a single 2D constituent constellation of thebuilding block will be placed at each tiling point of two consecutive 2Dtiling constellations. It is also possible to select the tilingconstellation to be a 4D or higher dimensional constellation. It can benoted that when higher dimensional signaling such as this is used, afractional number of bits per interval can be transmitted. In general,the building block and/or the tiling constellation can be designed tohave more than two dimensions, so that in general, all of the mi and/mjvalues can be positive fractional numbers (positive rational numbers) orpositive integers. In such embodiments, modifications to the coding DSPsub layer (e.g., the encoder and decoder software modules themselves)will be needed in addition to the coding control sub layer.

To further understand fixed selective mapping and its associated designtechniques, consider an example with two (N=2) streams d₁ and d₂. Let C₁be a 4-QAM constellation that employs constellation points formed usingcoordinates {+a,−a} along each of the I and Q dimensions, and let C₂ bea 64-QAM constellation that employs constellation points formed usingcoordinates {±c, ±3c, ±5c, ±7c} along each of the I and Q dimensions.Note that the average symbol energy of C₁ is 2a² and the average energyof C₂ is 42c². Therefore, in order to cause the constellations C₁ and C₂to employ the same average energy, the condition a²=21 c² needs to besatisfied. Further, the MSED for the constellations C₁ and C₂ are D₁²=4a² and D₂ ²=4c². Therefore, D₂ ²/D₁ ²=1/21, which can be consideredsmall enough to not cause significant performance degradations. Nextselect m2′=2 bits of stream d₂ to be transmitted along with m1=2 bits ofstream d₁ each symbol interval using the constellation shown in FIG. 9.FIG. 9 first uses a 4-QAM constellation for C_(2′) with coordinates{+y,−y} along each of the I and Q dimensions to carry the two bits fromthe higher stream d₂. Four copies of the constellation C_(2′) are placedat intersections of coordinates {+x,−x} along each of the I and Qdimensions as tiles to form the resulting tiled-building-block codedconstellation. The value of y is selected very close to c and the valueof x, which is very close to a, is then chosen to maintain the sameaverage energy according to (x²+y²)=a²=21c². If powerful codes such asturbo codes are used in streams d₁ and d₂, then any degradation causeddue to the use of the expanded multi-resolution constellation in FIG. 9becomes negligible. FIG. 9 employs Gray coding of bits from d₂ withinbuilding blocks, and also Gray coding of bits of d₁ among the buildingblock tiles.

Next consider another example with two (N=2) streams d₁ and d₂. In thisexample, let C₁ be a 16-QAM constellation that employs constellationpoints formed using coordinates {±b, ±3b} along each of the twodimensions, and let C₂ be a 256-QAM constellation that employsconstellation points formed using coordinates {±d, ±3d, ±5d, ±7d, ±9d,±11d, ±13d, ±15d} along each of the two dimensions. Note that theaverage symbol energy of C₁ is 10b² and the average symbol energy of C₂is 170d². Therefore, C₁ and C₂ will both employ the same average energywhen b²=17c². Further, the MSED of the constellations C₁ and C₂ is D₁²=4b² and D₂ ²=4d² respectively. Therefore, D₂ ²/D₁ ²=1/17, which canagain be considered small. In this example, two bits of stream d₂ can betransmitted along with four bits of stream d₁ using a constellationshown in FIG. 10. The SCMA approach in this example uses a QPSKconstellation C_(2′) with coordinates {+q,−q} along each of the I and Qdimensions for the two bits from d₂ using Gray coding, and placessixteen copies of C_(2′) at intersections {±p, ±3p} along each of the Iand Q dimensions as to represent four bits from stream d₁, also usingGray coding, to thereby form the tiled-building-block codedconstellation as shown in FIG. 10. The value of q is selected to beclose to d and the value of p, which is very close to b, is then chosento maintain the same average energy according to (5p²+q²)=5b²=85c². Ifpowerful codes are used in streams d₁ and d₂ any degradation caused dueto the use of the constellation in FIG. 10 becomes negligible.

Next consider how the embodiments discussed in connection with FIGS. 9and 10 can be combined. Consider an embodiment that has N=4 parallelstreams. In this embodiment, renumber the streams d₁ and d₂ of theembodiment of FIG. 9 as streams d₁ and d₃ respectively. Also, renumberthe streams d₁ and d₂ of the embodiment of FIG. 10 as streams d₂ and d₄respectively. The embodiment of FIG. 9 can be combined with theembodiment of FIG. 10 by transmitting two additional bits from stream d₃along with two bits of stream d₁ by using a 16-QAM building block formedfrom four coded bits taken from stream d₃, and placing each suchbuilding block at each point of the 4-QAM tiling constellation formedfrom two coded bits taken from stream d₁. Alternatively, an embodimentcan be constructed to transmit four additional bits of stream d₄ bychanging the QPSK constellation C_(2′) in the embodiment of FIG. 9 to a16-QAM constellation formed using coordinates {±d, ±3d} along eachdimension, along with two bits of d₁. Alternatively, a combinedembodiment can be formed that transmits two additional bits of stream d₄along with four bits of stream d₂. In this kind of embodiment, thetiling constellation is 16-QAM and the building block is 4-QAM. Also,although these embodiments all correspond to 64-QAM tiled-building-blockcoded constellations, their constellation points can be placed, forexample, to be sub-constellations of the 256-QAM constellation used inLTE.

In many embodiments, it is preferable to discretize the size of thebuilding blocks and the locations of the tile centers to meet one ormore specific practical requirements. For example, in the embodiment ofFIG. 9, the values of a, b x, and y can be chosen to force theconstellation points of FIG. 9 to coincide with the points of theconstellation of FIG. 4 multiplied by the suitable power scaling factor.For example, the constellation points of FIG. 9 can be discretized to beplaced on an underlying 64-QAM or 256-QAM constellation (highresolution/zoomed-in constellation as discussed above). The values of xand y can be chosen so that the resulting 16-QAM constellation in FIG. 9would be formed using a subset of the constellation points of the 64-QAMor 256-QAM constellation. In the context of FIGS. 4 and 5, this was theapproach taken, although the exact details of the power scale factorapplied to the constellations was not discussed in detail until thediscussions of FIG. 9 and FIG. 10.

In embodiments where enough streams are used so that the performancedegradation is significant, coding rates of those degraded streams canoptionally be adjusted to achieve the desired performance. For example,when the combined embodiment discussed above transmits four bits ofstream d₂, instead of using two additional bits of stream d₄, twoadditional bits of stream d₃ can be used by adjusting the code rates ofstreams d₂ and d₃ to achieve the desired performance. Similarly, whenthe combined embodiment transmits two bits of stream d₁, instead ofusing two additional bits of d₃, two additional bits of stream d₂ andtwo additional bits of stream d₃ can be used by adjusting the code ratesof streams d₁, d₂ and d₃ to achieve the desired performance. In suchembodiments, modifications to the coding DSP sub layer will be needed inaddition to just the coding control sub layer software.

The selective mapping and SCMA aspects of the present invention can alsobe applied in communication systems that do not involve OFDMA. Forexample, multimedia applications typically have different expectedlevels of performance for different types of signals, e.g., voice,video, and data. These expected levels of performance can besignificantly different from each other. In such applications, SCMA canbe used by forming building blocks using the bits of the stream that canallow higher error rates (smaller MSEDs) and defining the tilingconstellation based upon the streams with lower error rates (higherMSEDs). In such applications, the shared/multi-resolution resource blockdoes not necessarily support multi-user/multiple access functionality,but instead supports multi streaming of different streams with differenterror rate requirements. Instead of supporting multiple users, theshared/multi-resolution resource block can be used on a single-user OFDMchannel or even on a single QAM type channel, for example.

Variable selective mapping in accordance with an aspect of the presentinvention is presented to send additional coded bits as compared withfixed selective mapping as described above. The aim is to send more bitsper symbol while maintaining a specified level of performance. Variableselective mapping is most useful in applications like multimediaapplications where a single receiver is used to receive and decode themultiple streams. In accordance with variable selective mapping, insteadof using a sparsely populated constellation as shown in FIG. 4 or FIG.5, the full set of constellation points of the underlying constellationsuch as the 64-QAM or the 256-QAM constellation can be sent during eachsymbol interval. For example, this allows six coded bits to be sent onthe underlying 64-QAM constellation each symbol interval instead of justfour as per the sparsely populated 16-QAM constellation of FIG. 4.

Referring to FIG. 11 consider a specific example involving the LTE64-QAM constellation. In accordance with variable selective mapping, the64-QAM constellation of FIG. 11 is partitioned to include four cornersubsets which each contain four constellation points. FIG. 12 shows thesame 64-QAM constellation, but this time it is partitioned to includefour corner subsets which each contain nine constellation points. FIG.13 again shows the same 64-QAM constellation, but this time it ispartitioned to include four corner subsets which each contain twelveconstellation points. In FIGS. 11-13, the minimum separation between thecorner subsets depends on the number of points in each subset.Specifically, the minimum squared Euclidean distance between subsets inFIGS. 11, 12, and 13 is 100c², 36c² and 16c² respectively.

Referring now to FIG. 14, the same LTE 64-QAM constellation used in theexample discussed in connection with FIGS. 11-13 is shown with theconstellation points labeled in accordance with the Gray coded mappingused in the LTE 64-QAM constellation. Note that when bit mapping isperformed as shown in FIG. 14, the labels of all of the constellationpoints in all of the corner subsets shown in FIGS. 11, 12, and 13 willuse the same labels in their second, third, fifth and sixth bits. Moregenerally, the mapping/labeling is performed so that a subset of the bitlabels are always the same in all of the corner subsets. Also, thelabeling/mapping of FIG. 14 maintains Gray coding among all of theconstellation points in each of the corner subsets of FIGS. 11-13. Thetwo remaining bits (first and the fourth) are the same within eachcorner subset, and those two bits are varied according to Gray codingamong the corner subsets. The remaining constellation points (thoseoutside the corner subsets) also maintain Gray coding among all sixbits. A similar example can be constructed, but where the underlyingconstellation is corresponds to the 256-QAM constellation. In FIGS.11-13, the four corner boxes make up a “4-ary corner constellation,”which is similar in construction and theory to a 4-ary tileconstellation. Associated with the 4-ary corner constellation are all ofthe constellation points shown in the four corner boxes, i.e., there are4×6=16 constellation points associated with the corner constellation ofFIG. 11, 4×9=36 for FIG. 12, and 4×12=48 for FIG. 13. All of theconstellation points not associated with the 4-ary corner constellationare called the “non-corner constellation”, e.g., in FIG. 11 thenon-corner constellation includes 64−16=48 constellation points,64−36=28 constellation points in FIG. 12, and 64−48=16 constellationpoints in FIG. 13.

The constellation in FIGS. 11-13 can be used to transmit bits from bothchannel 1 (QPSK bits) associated with a lower stream d₁, and channel 3(64-QAM bits) associated with a higher stream d₂. Here the bits ofstream d₁ will correspond to corner subset selection and the bits ofstream d₂ will selectively correspond to either 64-QAM constellationpoint selection or intra-corner-subset constellation point selection. Asper FIGS. 11-14, Gray coding will be maintained among corner subsets forchannel 1. For channel 3, Gray coding will be maintained amongconstellation points within the corner subsets and also among all of theconstellation points of the entire 64-QAM constellation.

To better understand how variable selective mapping works, considerblocks of six coded bits taken for stream d₂ to be mapped to channel 3.Assuming the corner set partitioning of FIG. 11, during all symbolintervals, the 2^(nd), 3^(rd) 5^(th) and 6^(th) coded bits will be takenfrom stream d₂ and mapped to channel 3. If these four bits (the “controlbits”) point to a corner subset, then the two remaining bits (1^(st) and4^(th) bits) (the “variable-selected bits”) will be taken from stream d₁and mapped to channel 1 by selecting one of the four corner subsets.However, if the control bits do not point to a corner subset, the twovariable-selected bits will instead be taken from stream d₂. This way,the four bits (2^(nd), 3^(rd) 5^(th) and 6^(th)) in each block of sixcoded bits from stream d₂ act as the control bits to help decide whetherthe two remaining (variable-selected) bits should come from stream d₁ ord₂. Since six bits are always sent irrespective of the values of thecontrol bits, the above scheme is capable of transmitting six coded bitsduring all symbol intervals. Note that the bit labeling/mapping shown inFIG. 14 can be swapped/modified to have the four control bits correspondto LSB bits and to have the two variable-selected bits correspond to theMSB bits. This can be achieved explicitly or implicitly by swapping bits2 and 4 in all combinations shown in FIG. 14.

While variable selective mapping allows all of the bits associated withthe underlying constellation to be sent each interval, there will beuncertainty at the receiver as to whether the variable-selected bitscame from stream d₁ or d₂. One way to resolve this uncertainty is totransmit, for example in a frame header, one additional bit associatedwith each symbol in the frame to indicate whether the twovariable-selected bits came from stream d₁ or d₂. However, this lowersthe net throughput from six bits per symbol interval down to five.Still, this is a 25% improvement as compared to the throughput of FIG.4. Another way to resolve this uncertainty is to start decoding channel3 as a punctured code (every six bits from stream d₂ punctured to fourbits) using the bit metrics associated with the four control bits ofevery symbol. Once the soft information associated with the channel 3bits emerges, the uncertainty about origin of the variable-selected bitscan be resolved in a soft manner. Soft information can be used toindicate the probabilities that the variable-selected bits came fromcoded bit stream d₁ or d₂. The decoder can then run iterations until themost likely decoding solution emerges for both streams d₁ and d₂ for thecurrent frame. That is, soft decoding is used in determining whether thecontrol bits indicated stream d₁ or d₂ for each symbol interval in theframe. Optionally or additionally, a CRC can also be used on the fourcontrol bits to verify the decision of the four control bits. Someembodiments can instead use hard decoding of the control bits to resolvethe uncertainty.

In addition, the rate at which the bits are transmitted from stream d₁differs from that of fixed selective mapping such as shown in FIG. 4. InFIG. 4, every interval is guaranteed to transmit two coded bits fromstream d₁ and two coded bits from stream d₂ each symbol interval.However, the above-described variable selective mapping transmits twocoded bits from stream d₁ only if the control bits point to the cornersubsets. Assuming all bit combinations of control bits are equiprobable,channel 1 bits associated with stream d₁ are transmitted only withprobability ¼, 9/16 and ¾ in FIGS. 11-13 respectively. Hence, onaverage, channel 1 transmits 0.5, 1.125 and 1.5 coded bits per intervaland channel 3 transmits 5.5, 4.875 and 4.5 coded bits per interval inFIGS. 11-13 respectively. Note that the expected squared Euclidiandistance in channel 1 is 4a²=84c². Therefore, the constellation aspartitioned in FIG. 11, which has a minimum squared Euclidian distanceof 100c², is guaranteed to perform better than the normal expectedperformance of channel 1. Similarly, the worst case squared distancesuggests that the configuration in FIG. 12 performs about 3.5 dB worsewhen compared with the expected performance of channel 1 and that ofFIG. 13 suffers about 7 dB loss from the expected performance ofchannel 1. However, since there many other higher squared Euclidiandistances that can also occur in FIGS. 12 and 13, their actualperformance can be close to that of the expected performance ofchannel 1. As demonstrated by FIGS. 11-13, variable selective mappingallows a tradeoff between the performance and the bit rate of channel 1while maintaining the same performance of channel 3 and transmitting atotal of six coded bits every interval.

Variable selective mapping can be generalized to a general 2^(m)-aryconstellation to transmit bits from streams d₁ through d_(N) usingrespective selective mapping channels 1, . . . , N. In this generaltechnique, a 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation is used to transmit upto m bits from stream d_(N) into channel N. Let m=(ma+mb), where mbcorresponds to the number of control bits taken from every block of mbits from stream d_(N). However, the ma variable-selected bits can comefrom one of the streams d₁, . . . , d_(N), depending on the mb controlbit combination selected in that block of m coded bits from streamd_(N). In order to achieve this transmission the constellation andmapping needs to satisfy the following properties or their equivalents:(a) the constellation is partitioned into subsets A_(ij), j=1, 2, . . ., (N−1), j=1, 2, . . . , (N−1), (b) for any given j, the same distinctcombinations of mb control bit combinations are employed in each subsetA_(ij), i=1, 2, . . . , 2^(ma), (c) Gray coding is used among thedistinct combinations of control bits within subsets, (d) for any givenj, Gray coding is used for the ma selected bits among the subsetsA_(ij), i=1, 2, . . . , 2^(ma), and (e) Gray coding is used among all mbits outside the collection of subsets A_(ij), j=1, 2, . . . , (N−1). Ifdesired, ma and mb can be made dependent on j to transmit differentnumbers of bits from different channels.

Fixed and variable selective mappings can also be used to constructother types of communication systems. For example, in OFDMA systems suchas 4G and 5G LTE where MIMO (multiple input multiple output) is employedwith multiple transmit and/or receive antennas, spatial multiplexing andmulti-user MIMO configurations are in common use or are in development.It is to be understood that fixed and variable selective mapping can beapplied to form SCMA embodiments that employ MIMO techniques and usemultiple transmitters to transmit the same or different symbol streamsto be sent to one or multiple users via the downlink. MIMO systems canbe used with spatial diversity by using space time codes or (spacefrequency codes depending on the application) for improving performanceof a data stream. MIMO systems can also be used for spatial multiplexingto increase the throughput by transmitting multiple data streams. SCMAembodiments that inherently transmit multiple data streams can be usedin MIMO systems with spatial diversity and/or spatial multiplexing. SCMAcan be used individually with either with spatial diversity or spatialmultiplexing. The present invention also contemplates embodiments thatuse spatial diversity for one stream category 1 (like channel 1) and usespatial multiplexing to transmit multiple streams of a differentcategory (like channel 3). In such systems, fixed or variable selectivemapping can be used to form symbols that selectively include differentbits from different respective streams associated with different users,different antennas, and/or different streams such as application layerstreams such as multimedia applications, and/or lower layer controlstreams for system control functions.

FIG. 15 shows an example systems architecture 1000 into which any of theSCMA techniques described herein may be used. A headend system 1005transmits via a downlink channel to user device 1010. In this patentapplication, the term “headend” generally refers to any base station ornetwork based equipment that is used to communicate with one or moreuser devices. The term “headend” is commonly used with cable modems andcable TV to indicate the cable network station that communicates witheither cable TV sets or cable modems. Herein the term “headend” canrefer to cable modem network equipment, or cable TV network equipmentsuch as digital TV broadcast equipment, but also LTE and WiFi type OFDMAbase stations, and any other such communications equipment thatcommunicates with one or more user devices using a shared downlink. Theuser device 1010 transmits back to the headend system 1005 via an uplinkchannel. The headend system comprises a protocol stack 1020 whichincludes a physical layer 1024. The headend system also may include acontrol and routing module 1028 to connect to external networks,databases, and the like. The headend system also contains a computercontrol module 1029 which comprises processing power coupled to memory.The computer control module 1029 preferably implements any maintenancefunctions, service provisioning and resource allocation,auto-configuration, software patch downloading and protocol versionsoftware downloads, billing, local databases, web page interfaces, upperlayer protocol support, subscriber records, and the like.

The user terminal 1010 (e.g., an LTE and/or WiFi compatible “mobileunit”) similarly includes a physical layer interface 1032, a protocolstack 1034 and an application layer module 1036 which may include userinterface devices as well as application software. The user terminal1010 also may optionally include a packet processor 1038 which can beconnected to a local area network, for example. The user 1010 terminalmay also act as an IP switching node or router in addition to userfunctions in some embodiments.

Both the headend 1005 and the user device 1010 are usually implementedwith digital processing logic which includes one or more processorscoupled to respective memories and/or shared memories. Aspects of thepresent invention are typically implemented by placing sequences ofinstructions into certain ones of the memories. For example, a firstprocessor may interact with a control channel and work at configuringthe system in accordance with information in or associated with aresource block. This processor operates at a coding control sub layer.The encoder and decoder operate at a DSP coding sub layer. For example,items at this sub layer include signal mapper, bit metrics computations,and iterative or non-iterative decoding software modules. Signalconditioning may also be optionally employed in this sub layer. Althoughthe present invention involves software, the present invention isactually implemented as a method, a process, or as system or apparatus.For example, once hardware 1005 or 1010 is designed and implemented withthe appropriate software, the system 1000 and the apparatus 1005 and1010 result.

Another type of embodiment replaces the headend system 1005 with anotheruser device 1010 in which case direct peer-to-peer communications isenabled. In many applications, though, the headend can act as anintermediary between two user devices to enable indirect peer-to-peercommunications using the same headend-to/from-user deviceuplink/downlink architecture illustrated in FIG. 15.

In preferred embodiments of the present invention, at least one of theuplink and the downlink channels is augmented by using SCMA as per thepresent invention in the coder and decoder pair. In some types ofembodiments, the PHYS 1024, 1032 may include echo cancellation,cross-talk cancellation, equalization, and other forms of signalconditioning or receiver pre-processing. In many applications, the SCMAaspects of the present invention will be applied in an OFDMA or cablemodem downlink from the headend 1005 to a plurality of mobile units orcable modems configured similarly to the user device 1010. In mostenvisioned embodiments the uplink will not use SCMA.

It can be noted that SCMA can be applied in uplinks especially inconjunction with close proximity peer-to-peer communications. Forexample, a mobile device can use the building block spacing or theunderlying constellation spacing to communicate with a close proximitypeer, and can simultaneously use the tile or corner subset 4-QAMconstellation for communicating with a more far away base station.Another place where SCMA can be deployed is in systems that supportWiFi-LTE coexistence. WiFi is usually short rage and LTE/LTE-U is longerrage. As a result WiFi signals are stronger (like channel 3) & LTE/LTE-Uare signals are weaker (like channel 1). In such situations SCMA cantransmit bits jointly to have building blocks formed by WiFi bits andtiles formed by LTE bits. That is, SCMA can be used to combine bothtechnologies, WiFi & LTE/LTE-U.

Similarly, the protocol stack may preferably include in its link layerscrambling, interleaving, and forward error correction coding (channelcoding, e.g., Reed-Solomon, block codes, convolutional codes, and turbocodes). The headend may include the optional packet switching nodeand/or router 1028, for example using an Internet Protocol (IP) packetforwarding policy. External databases connected via the router 1028thereby provide remote services to the subscriber terminal via theheadend. Similarly, local databases holding more specific types of datamay be saved in computerized storage areas and processed using thecomputerized module 1029.

In one type of embodiment, the headend system may be a cellularcommunications base station that carries mobile data, such as IP packettraffic. In other embodiments, the headend may be a wirelessmetropolitan area network (e.g., WiMax), a local area network basestation or personal area network base station, respectively, for WiFiand Bluetooth type applications. In other types of applications, theheadend system 1005 may correspond to a cable services headend systemand the user device 1010 may be a cable modem. In other types ofapplications, the head end system 1005 may correspond to a DSL serviceshead end system and the user device 1010 may be a DSL modem. In suchapplications the user device may also have a router function and connectto a home or office network, or any other type of network, for example.

Although the present invention has been described with reference tospecific embodiments, other embodiments may occur to those skilled inthe art without deviating from the intended scope. For example, whiletiled building block coded constellations are discussed throughout, ingeneral, different types of multilevel codes with different types ofcodes used at various coding levels could be used in SCMA systems. Inthese more general embodiments, the upper coding levels can be viewed asthe distant view/low resolution constellation for the first mobile unitwith the weak channel and the lower coding levels can be viewed as thezoomed in/high resolution constellation for the second mobile unit withthe strong channel. In general more than two mobile units can accessdifferent coding levels of a received multilevel coded constellation.Similarly, while most discussions indicated certain constellations wouldbe sent each symbol interval, such expanded multilevel constellationscould be sent, for example, during only a subset of the 168 symbolintervals per resource block. Also, while block diagrams are providedherein, it should be noted that any of the blocks described herein couldbe implemented in hardware using programmable or custom logic, or insoftware running on one or more processors. Also, the blocks indifferent figures can be mixed and augmented in any way with blocks ofany other figures to arrive at other contemplated embodiments, and anyof the blocks can be modified in accordance with described alternativeembodiments. While most discussion focused on OFDMA and multi-usersystems, certain aspects of the present invention can also be applied inmulti-resolution single user links that use OFDM or even a single QAMconstellation or some other kind of modulation such as code divisionmultiple access (CDMA). Hence it is to be understood that these generalfamilies of embodiments are contemplated and that the invention is to belimited only by the scope and spirit of the appended claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. An apparatus for use in a communication system that is coupled to a first mobile terminal via a first communication channel and a second mobile terminal via a second communication channel, the first mobile terminal is directed to receive a 2^(m1′)-ary signal constellation and the second mobile terminal is directed to receive a 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation, the first communication channel supports a 2^(m1)-ary signal constellation, the second communication channel supports a 2^(m2)-ary signal constellation, wherein m1, m2, m1′ and m2′ comprise respective variables that are each positive rational numbers and wherein m1′≦m1, m2′≦m2, and m1<m2, the apparatus comprising: at least one processor coupled to a memory which holds instructions to be executed by the at least one processor, wherein the instructions cause the at least one processor to perform the following actions: receive a first stream of bits associated with the first mobile terminal, and encode the first stream of bits to form a first encoded stream of bits; receive a second stream of bits associated with the second mobile terminal, and encode the second stream of bits to form a second encoded stream of bits; and receive the first encoded stream of bits and the second encoded stream of bits and form a symbol stream by mapping, during each of a plurality of symbol intervals, m1′ number of coded bits from the first encoded stream of bits and m2′ number of coded bits from the second encoded stream of bits onto a shared/multi-resolution signal constellation whose constellation points are drawn from a 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation associated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block, wherein m comprises a variable that is a positive rational number and wherein m≧m1′+m2′; wherein the communication system is operative to transmit control information (1) to direct the first mobile terminal to extract from a first sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, first receiver demodulation information enabling the first mobile terminal to compute bit metrics that correspond to the first sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation and avoid computing bit metrics that do not correspond to first sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, and to use the first receiver demodulation information in a first decoder to form an estimate of the first stream of bits, and (2) to direct the second mobile terminal to extract, from a second sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, second receiver demodulation information enabling the second mobile terminal to compute bit metrics that correspond to the second sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation and avoid computing bit metrics that do not correspond to second sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, and to use the second receiver demodulation information in a second decoder to form an estimate of the second stream of bits.
 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first encoded stream of bits is tile encoded, the second encoded stream of bits is building-block encoded, and the first and second receiver demodulation information corresponds to respective first and second subsets of bit metrics.
 3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein each of the first encoded stream of bits and the second encoded stream of bits is encoded in accordance with a turbo code.
 4. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the first sub-constellation portion is associated with a 2^(m1′)-ary tile constellation and the second sub-constellation portion is a 2^(m2′)-ary building block constellation.
 5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the 2^(m1′)-ary tile constellation has an average energy E1 that is selected to be received alone by a low resolution receiver in the communication system that is able to decode a 2^(m1)-ary constellation, the 2^(m2′)-ary building block constellation has an average energy E2 that is selected to be received by a high resolution receiver that is able to decode a 2^(m2)-ary constellation.
 6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first encoded stream of bits is an upper coding level in a multi-level code and the second encoded stream of bits is a lower coding level in the multi-level code.
 7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first and second receiver demodulation information corresponds to respective first and second subsets of bit metrics.
 8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein m1′, m2′, and m are each positive integers.
 9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first communication channel has a significantly lower SNR (signal to noise ratio) as compared to the second communication channel.
 10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the first communication channel and the second communication channel correspond to respective first and second wireless communication paths traversed by an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) downlink signal that carries the shared/multi-resolution signal constellation and that is transmitted by the communication system.
 11. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the at least one processor to perform the following actions: receive third through L^(th) streams of bits associated with additional third through L^(th) mobile terminals, and encode the third through L^(th) streams of bits to form third through L^(th) encoded streams of bits, wherein L≧3; and receive the third through L^(th) encoded streams of bits and form the symbol stream by mapping, during each of the plurality of symbol intervals, m3′ through mL′ sets of coded bits from the third through L^(th) encoded streams of bits onto an 2^((m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′))-ary shared/multi-resolution signal constellation that is a sub-constellation of the 2^(m)-ary underlying signal constellation, and m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′≦m.
 12. An apparatus for use in a communication system that is coupled to a receiver via a communication channel, the receiver is directed to receive a 2^(m1′)-ary signal constellation and also a 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation, where m1′ and m2′ comprise respective variables that are each positive rational numbers, the apparatus comprising: at least one processor coupled to a memory which holds instructions to be executed by the at least one processor, wherein the instructions cause the at least one processor to perform the following actions: receive a first stream of bits associated with a first application layer program that can withstand a first bit error rate and encode the first stream of bits to form a first encoded stream of bits; receive a second stream of bits associated with a second application layer program that can withstand a second bit error rate and encode the second stream of bits to form a second encoded stream of bits; and receive the first encoded stream of bits and the second encoded stream of bits and form a symbol stream by mapping, during each of a plurality of symbol intervals, m1′ number of coded bits from the first encoded stream of bits and m2′ number of coded bits from the second encoded stream of bits onto a shared/multi-resolution signal constellation whose constellation points are drawn from a 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation associated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block, wherein m comprises a variable that is a positive rational number and wherein m≧m1′+m2′; wherein the communication system is operative to transmit control information (1) to direct the receiver to extract, from a first sub-constellation portion of a 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, first receiver demodulation information enabling the first mobile terminal to compute bit metrics that correspond to the first sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation and avoid computing bit metrics that do not correspond to first sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, and to use the first receiver demodulation information in a first decoder to form an estimate of the first stream of bits, and (2) to direct the receiver to extract, from a second sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, second receiver demodulation information enabling the second mobile terminal to compute bit metrics that correspond to the second sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation and avoid computing bit metrics that do not correspond to second sub-constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation, and to use the second receiver demodulation information in a second decoder to form an estimate of the second stream of bits.
 13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the first encoded stream of bits is tile encoded, the second encoded stream of bits is building-block encoded, and the first and second receiver demodulation information corresponds to respective first and second subsets of bit metrics.
 14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein each of the first encoded stream of bits and the second encoded stream of bits is encoded in accordance with a turbo code.
 15. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the first sub-constellation portion is associated with a 2^(m1′)-ary tile constellation and the second sub-constellation portion is a 2^(m2′)-ary building block constellation.
 16. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the first encoded stream of bits is an upper coding level in a multi-level code and the second encoded stream of bits is a lower coding level in the multi-level code.
 17. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the first sub-constellation portion is a 4-ary corner constellation, the second sub-constellation portion is a non-corner constellation, and the first encoded stream of bits and the second encoded stream of bits are mapped in accordance with variable selective mapping.
 18. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the 2^(m)-ary underlying constellation comprises a 2^((m1′+m2′))-ary underlying constellation.
 19. A second mobile terminal apparatus for communicating with a communication system base station that is coupled to both a first mobile terminal apparatus via a first channel and to the second mobile terminal apparatus via a second channel, the second mobile terminal apparatus comprising: an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) downlink receiver that is configured, in response to control information associated with a shared/multi-resolution resource block, to receive data symbols from selected data tones using a selected one of a plurality of different signal constellations which include a 2^(m1)-ary signal constellation, 2^(m1′)-ary signal constellation, 2^(m2)-ary signal constellation, a 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation and a 2^(m)-ary signal constellation, wherein m, m1, m1′, m2, and m2′ comprise respective variables that are each positive rational numbers, wherein m1′≦m1, m2′≦m2, m1<m2′≦m, and m≧m1′+m2′, and wherein the data symbols are drawn from a shared/multi-resolution signal constellation that is a sub constellation of the 2^(m)-ary signal constellation; at least one processor coupled to a memory which holds instructions to be executed by the at least one processor, wherein the instructions cause the at least one processor to perform the following actions: receive the control information from the communication system base station; based upon the control information, configure the OFDMA downlink receiver to extract from a sequence of data symbols modulated onto respective orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) tones associated with the shared/multi-resolution resource block, second receiver demodulation information enabling the second mobile terminal apparatus to compute bit metrics that correspond to the sub constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary signal constellation and avoid computing bit metrics that do not correspond to the sub constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary signal constellation, and to couple the second receiver demodulation information to a decoder that is configured to decode a coded 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation to form a sequence of decoded bits by computing bit metrics that correspond to the sub constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary signal constellation and not computing bit metrics that do not correspond to the sub constellation portion of the 2^(m)-ary signal constellation; wherein the m1′ number bits are associated with a first coded bit stream whose destination is the first mobile terminal apparatus.
 20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein additional third through L^(th) streams of coded bits, whose destinations are additional third through L^(th) mobile terminals, have further been mapped to the shared/multi-resolution signal constellation, the shared/multi-resolution signal constellation is a 2^((m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′))-ary constellation, and m1′+m2′+ . . . +mL′≦m.
 21. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the second receiver demodulation information corresponds to a subset containing m2′ number of bit metrics per symbol.
 22. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the 2^(m2′)-ary signal constellation corresponds to a building block constellation, the first coded bit stream is used to identify a sequence of tiles, and the second receiver demodulation information corresponds to a subset of m2′ number of bit metrics per symbol interval. 